Hi, my name is Fatuma Salat and I am a 2nd year occupational therapist student at Otago Polytechnic. One of the papers I am studying this semester is called Participation in Occupation II. Students are required to choose an activity and reflect on it using the course content in this semester. I have chosen cooking as my activity and I have reflected on what it means to me using what I have learned so far in this course.

Sunday, 23 October 2011

Practical Considerations

Simmons & La Table (2008) discuss why making sure everything is available beforehand when cooking is important. They sate “having the right ingredients and tools for a specific job makes cooking easier and more fun, the results often taste better (p. vii).”

Practical considerations play an important role in cooking. Every day is a different day; each day presents new opportunities. As I stated in my previous posts, mood is a huge motivation factor if I want to cook, therefore I consider it as a practical consideration. There is no point for me to start an activity if I am not feeling it, in most cases; I would do a sloppy job of it. When I want to cook, I wold have to put everything into consideration, this would include; ingredients, appliances, utensils, amount of people I am cooking for etc.

Today I wanted to cook gourmet pizza for everyone. I usually make the base three hours before and leave it to rise. I like to use special sauces for this pizza, and most always you can find it at Nandos. I had previously bought some, but there weren’t any left for today, which meant that I had to drive up all the way to the city center just to get these sauces. I did not have the time to do that so I had to look for alternatives. Therefore, ingredients would come under practical considerations and the lack of it did not create the right circumstances for me to cook a gourmet pizza.

Another practical consideration was time; this is a huge factor when it comes to cooking. In this instance, the time of the day, did not permit me to prepare the base and insufficient time to go and buy the ingredients also hindered me from cooking this food, therefore, I decided to leave it for another day. Usually, I make sure everything is available the day before, or I decide to cook something a day before, this gives me ample time to make sure everything I need is available.